The Rev. Jesse Jackson told
Newsmax TV on Tuesday that charges of race-baiting leveled at activists like himself and the Rev. Al Sharpton are as old as the civil rights movement, and he rejected any suggestion that nationwide protests over policing are inherently violent or racially inflammatory.
"Dr. King was accused of being a race-baiter as he fought the forces of the South," Jackson told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, referring to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Jackson knew and worked with. "They called Dr. King a race-baiter and they called him a communist at the same time."
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Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in Chicago, advocated a broad view of the demonstrations and unrest that have followed grand jury decisions clearing white police officers in the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Jackson connected those public outcries to a larger struggle for social and economic justice that Americans of all backgrounds are waging on several fronts. He said that what's "really driving the agenda" is "the gap between the top 1 percent in our country and the 99."
Far from repudiating Sharpton — who has placed himself at the forefront of the Brown and Garner conflagrations — former Democrat presidential candidate Jackson echoed one of Sharpton's rhetorical trademarks, saying that "without justice, there really is no peace."
He also said the ongoing movement is non-violent because "violence distracts from the message."
The message, he said, is a continued pattern of "blocking out" that relegates women and minorities to second-class status in an increasingly unequal 21st Century economy. He pointed to stagnant wages, student debt, and a lack of opportunity in prosperous sectors such as technology and banking.
The banking industry, he said, "is even worse," yet was bailed out after the 2008 financial collapse while homeowners — many of them minorities — were "locked out" and left in foreclosure.
"So, we fight for economic equality just like we fight for social justice," said Jackson.
He described criticism as an occupational hazard, citing the example of King, whose antagonists were "so successful in attacking him until the week before he died" that one poll of the era showed a majority of blacks took issue with King's opposition to the Vietnam War.
"We must lead by transforming public opinion," said Jackson. "Often, that is a very lonely journey."
He also said that violence is not limited to episodes of property destruction, like the arson and looting in Ferguson, Missouri, or
physical clashes with police in cities such as New York and Berkeley, California.
"I grew up in violence," said Jackson. "I was jailed trying to use a public library. That was violent."
He also spoke of "the right to breathe," identifying with the "I Can't Breathe" meme that has become a rallying cry in the Garner chokehold case.
"We want all Americans to breathe," said Jackson.
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